Activision is influencing future console design, says Kotick
Company success having impact on first-party hardware designs, but CEO expects PS3 success for at least eight years
The success of Activision is helping to influence the design of future home consoles set to follow the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, according to CEO Robert Kotick.
Kotick was speaking during the Activision Blizzard Analyst Day in Los Angeles, where he added that he expects the PlayStation 3 to remain on the market for at least eight years.
"Now that we have the weight of being the largest payer of royalties to the first-parties of any third-party company, I definitely see us as starting to influence hardware design, and they're thinking about the evolution of the next generation of hardware," he said.
"The good news is that when it does come it's going to have a powerful impact on our ability to capture a lot of that part of the marketplace today that feature films, television or music [inhabit]."
Activision has enjoyed tremendous success with the Guitar Hero franchise, a retail game supported by sales of multiple downloadable content and its own peripheral hardware.
"The better news for us right now is it's going to happen a lot longer from now than we've seen with prior generations, because the power and the capability of the hardware we have today is so strong, and the differentiation between the devices is so great that you're likely to see this cycle last a lot longer than we've seen in the past," continued Kotick.
"I think there's a long life ahead of us, we're in year eight of PlayStation 2 and when you look at PlayStation 3 technically we're likely to see at least eight years' success."
The CEO also suggested that current home consoles are still not yet appealingly priced for true mass market adoption, and that he expects mainstream consumers will buy into videogames over the next couple of years.
"We're about to enter the next phase of the console opportunity – that is where price points are starting to achieve mass market-level price points," he offered.
"We haven't gotten to a price point yet that we think is a catalyst for true mass market consumption, but we're starting to see over the next couple of years price points come down to price points that we think will be the catalyst for continued mass market adoption."